


Float With Me

by TheNot



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Autistic Keith (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 18:40:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8907622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheNot/pseuds/TheNot
Summary: When Pidge creates a charger Paladins’ earth technology, Keith is glad to finally have his music back as an emotional outlet. Lance, on the other hand, struggles with the added reminder of being apart from his family
Basically a sort of-songfic where Lance is sad and Keith doesn’t really know how to help. Keith is autistic bc I always headcanon Keith as autistic (even tho it’s not explicitly stated in-fic). The song this is based on is “Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space” by Spiritualized.





	

The first thing Lance did when Pidge recharged his phone was attempt to call his parents, despite Pidge’s constant insistence that there’s no way Earth telephone towers would ever receive a signal from so far away. When the call didn’t go through, Lance laughed it off, saying he was just double-checking, but his eyes betrayed how disappointing the confirmation was. Sometimes Keith wondered if Lance made himself depressed on purpose. It certainly felt like he did.

 

Between them, the Paladins had Lance’s phone, Pidge’s handheld gaming system, Hunk’s phone (which was still under repair by Pidge since it got shattered when Lance spat him out of Blue), and Keith’s MP3 player. Shiro didn’t have any electronics other than his arm, because, well, the Galra weren’t kind enough to leave his cell on him for a year, and he didn’t have time to get a new one the short time he was back on Earth.

 

Once Keith’s MP3 player finally reached full charge, he felt his muscles twitch with the urge to train while listening to his music again. As he turned from Pidge’s make-shift charging station, MP3 in hand, he nearly ran into Lance who had apparently been looking over his shoulder.

 

“Keith, what kind of music do you have?” Lance asked, grabbing the MP3 and inspecting it.

 

“Lance!” Keith was so shocked for a moment, his reflexes to retrieve the MP3 were slower than Lance’s were at holding it above Keith’s head. Normally the height difference wasn’t too bothering to Keith, but moments like this made him furious.

 

“Man, this thing’s so old! I’d be surprised to find _any_ music from the 2020’s on here at all,” Lance remarked, scrolling through the library. Keith repressed dual urges to make a jump for it and to punch Lance in the face.

 

“Lance, give it back. I need it for my training,” he said, trying to keep his voice level. “If you’d like me to practice some punches on you, though, be my guest.” The threat was possible enough that Lance widened his eyes for a moment in fear, then smirked and handed it back.

 

“Don’t get your panties in a bunch, Keith,” he scoffed as Keith tried to stuff the MP3 in his jacket pocket as aggressively as possible. “I was just looking. You know, you’re lucky that you have downloaded music at all. I only used streaming services so my phone’s practically useless.”

 

“You have lots of other stuff on there, don’t you?” Keith asked, not really expecting an answer as he pushed past Lance to head to the training room. “Don’t you have pictures of your family or something?” As he reached the door to leave, he heard silence. Chancing a look back, he saw that Lance was staring at his phone with some kind of sad, guilty expression. Probably more family angst. “Lance?”

 

“Hm?” he looked up. “Yea, I mean, I do, so that’s nice,” he muttered, waving the phone for emphasis.

 

“Great,” Keith replied, already opening the door and leaving. “I’m going to train now.”

 

“Don’t hurt yourself!” Lance shouted after him.

 

\----------------------------------

 

Keith would freely admit to anyone that he didn’t have much back on Earth waiting for him and he didn’t care too much about Earth luxuries, with the exception perhaps of more edible food. Having his MP3 working again sufficiently changed his mind of that.

 

While living alone in a cabin, scavenging for food and researching the alien tech scattered in the area around the Garrison, Keith occaionally felt lonely. As an orphan, solitude wasn’t too unfamiliar a feeling, but after enough time, even Keith started to feel the effects of a sustained lengths of no human contact. His MP3 player and the few hundred tracks contained within was always his go-to whenever he felt his sanity slipping.

 

Even though he wasn’t much of a singer or a dancer, music was an integral part of Keith’s life. To an outsider, it might have appeared as though he was fairly emotionless, given his near-permanent scowl and difficulty understanding jokes of Lance’s….caliber. Truthfully, Keith genuinely felt things strongly, sometimes more strongly than the people around him, at least in his opinion. When Pidge had announced that she wanted to leave the castle for good, Keith’s overwhelming fear of losing someone he had grown to care about had resulted in him ranting about how Pidge was letting down the universe. When Lance jokingly said the mice did more to save his life than the Paladins, Keith uncharacteristically and immediately bragged about punching Sendak, hurt that Lance didn’t acknowledge his efforts.

 

Keith remembered talking to Shiro about his emotional issues once upon a time, before the Kerberos mission, eliciting an, “feelings are tough, kid,” and a ruffle of his hair before Shiro walked away. He supposed that was the understatement of the millennium.

 

Keith had songs ready for any mood, and when he recalled certain moments in his life, there was almost always some tacky song from the early 2000’s to accompany it. The primary one being when he realized he was gay after making out with another star cadet in a storage closet back at the Garrison: “I Kissed a Girl,” which was more pop-y than he usually preferred, but it was helpful for his sad gay teen heart.

 

His Angry playlist and his Sexual Tension playlist were the best for getting pumped for a work-out, just as his anger and sexual frustration were before he got power back to his MP3. Lately, both feelings had stemmed from increasingly aggravating encounters with Lance. At first, Keith was worried that his 18 year-old libido would struggle living among three fairly attractive men, but his growing friendship with Hunk and his renewed brotherly relationship with Shiro narrowed his options down to Lance, who, despite being some kind of friend, somehow also endeared himself with Keith via every shitty joke and poorly executed competitive tactic he took.

 

Today, Lance had managed to flirt with four different vaguely-female-looking alien humanoids when the Paladins landed on a planet go on a “cultural learning expedition”, as Coran dubbed it. Lance even had the gall to joke with Keith about “letting him have one” if he helped out as a wingman. Keith wasn’t sure why Lance’s wild behavior had escalated in the past few days, but it was really grating on his nerves.

 

In thinking about the event again, Keith leapt up and cut through a training robot, shoulder to hip, as The Killers lyrics floated through his wireless headphone set-up. “ _Jealousy, turning saints into the sea_ …” Cliché, but fitting.

 

After training for three hours, Keith had to admit that he was seriously low on energy. He reached up to tie his hair back, and felt an ache in his neck from where his jugular was pounding. “End training protocol!” he huffed, hoping to catch the program before it produced a new robot. He reached into his pocket to pause his music and sighed, running a gloved hand through his sweat-drenched bangs.

 

Having his music back made it easier to focus and gave him an outlet and sounding board for the complicated things he was feeling, but sometimes it amplified it. Despite the excessive work-out, Keith still felt electricity in his fingers and toes, wanting to move but not actually having the energy to keep going. Maybe if he played something calmer?

 

Taking out his MP3 player once more, he groaned audibly, seeing it was at 3% battery. The main downside of having a single docking station was that it was in the main control room – at the center of the ship. Keith inwardly shrugged and pocketed the device, picking up his jacket and his bayard to drop it off on the charger before taking a shower.

 

\----------------------------------

 

Now clean and itching to get his hands back on his MP3 player (he was becoming a bit of a music junkie), Keith didn’t bother drying his hair once out of the shower, and just threw on his clothes, freshly cleaned by the washing unit in his room, with a towel over his shoulders to soak up excess water.

 

When he got back to the control room, he repressed a groan of anger when he saw that his MP3 had been moved off the charging station in favor of Lance’s ridiculously large phone (who even has a phone bigger than their own hand?). He looked at how long his own player had charged – it was up to only 5%.

 

“Damn it, Lance,” he huffed, pressing the power button on Lance’s phone to see how far along it was, and seeing it only a black screen. He must have plugged it in recently.

 

“Keith?” he heard a faint, shaky voice respond. Keith whipped his head around, looking for the source, accidentally splashing water from his hair into his face. No laughter at Keith’s apparent floundering, so Lance must not be in view.

 

“Hello?” Keith called out, walking the perimeter of the control room. When he heard no reply, he grew a little concerned, considering the door hadn’t been opened and Lance sounded a little upset. As he turned a corner, he saw Lance sitting at the edge of the large wall made up entirely of windows to space, stars zooming by. “Lance, what are you doing?”

 

“Nothing,” he breathed softly, sitting with his arms propped on his knees and resting his chin on his elbows. Were his eyes red? “Absolutely nothing.” The lack of enthusiasm in his voice was incredibly off-putting.

 

“O-okay,” stammered Keith, not entirely sure what to say to this seemingly depressed Lance. “Well, next time, don’t just take my MP3 player off the charging station. You always act like you’re the most important person in the world.” As he turned to stalk off, he heard a sad bark of laughter from Lance, forcing him to pause. Lance now had his face covered in his hands and his shoulders were shaking.

 

“I-I know, Keith,” Lance said, his voice sounding half-way between a laugh and a sob.

 

Keith knew he was going to regret this. Offering emotional support to the most annoying and most… not attractive, but attractive to _him_ , member of the team was not something he was prepared to do, but he supposed it was for the good of Voltron, and everyone, for that matter, if he took at least a few steps in building a stronger bond with Lance. One that Lance would remember, at least.

 

When Keith plopped down next to Lance, the blue paladin jerked, as shocked as Keith was that he had sat down.

 

“What’s wrong?” Keith asked, trying to force his voice to sound caring. Instead, the sentence’s tone went up a little too high and it sounded like he was being sarcastic.

 

“Like you care,” Lance scoffed, looking back out into space. Keith could make out tracks made from tears etching lines into his face. “You don’t care about anything.”

 

“Ouch,” Keith said. “I care about plenty of things, Lance.”

 

“Including me?”

 

“On rare occasions.” Keith caught a quick side-eye from Lance and wondered what feelings his eyes were expressing. Sometimes it was hard for Keith to read these things, especially from someone as unpredictable as Lance.

 

“Fine. It’s- it’s just-“ Lance sighed, starting over. “It’s my phone.”

 

“Your phone?” Keith blinked at him. “Lance, your phone will re-charge again. It’s not dead forever.”

 

Lance shot him an incredulous, exasperated look. “Yes, thank you, I’m not _that_ much of an idiot…I think.”

 

“Okay, well then, what about your phone?” Was dealing with people’s problems always about prying answers out of them? Keith couldn’t believe people actually subjected themselves to this verbal fishing expedition for the sake of friendships.

 

“This is going to sound so stupid,” Lance laughed mirthlessly.

 

“Everything you say is stupid, so I promise I won’t be surprised.” Keith said this with a smile so Lance would hopefully get the joke. By his returned half-smile, he supposed he did.

 

“Well…” Keith was worried he might trail off again when he suddenly started blabbing a mile a minute. “My photo library on my phone is - I shit you not – 90% selfies. When I finally got my phone charged up I was so _so_ excited to look at my photos and see pictures of my parents and my siblings again so that I might, y’know, finally have SOME way of connecting with them despite being gajillions of light-years away from them – but no! Apparently all pre-Voltron Lance knew how to do was take photos of his own fucking face and a few notes from Hunk’s _fucking notebook_. And now, we might be stranded in space forever. We might die in space. And what pictures have I left for myself? Just me. My own. Fucking. Face.”

 

The last few words were an angry hiss and his fists were clenched so hard Keith could see every vein outlined. Lance suddenly turned to look Keith in the eye and grabbed his shoulders.

 

“Actually, I do have one photo worth something. It’s a-“ Lance pauses to laugh, as if he can’t hold it in, “fucking douchebag bathroom mirror photo from when I visited home, and my older sister Maria is leaning in the door to yell at me because she needs to do her make-up. She looks so pissed and it was so funny at the time…” His jovial tone dies out and Keith can feel the fingers at his shoulders clench. “But now that’s my family. My sister’s bitch face. Because once again, I was being an idiot. That’s what’s wrong, Keith. That’s what’s _fucking. Wrong._ ”

 

“Lance…” Keith cursed himself for being so bad at knowing how to deal with these situations, then cursed himself again for being concerned about such skills when Lance was shaking and beginning to sob once again. He wasn’t much for physical contact, but he knew enough to pull Lance in for a hug, hoping his recently-exhausted muscles wouldn’t give out from the weight of Lance’s turmoil.

 

“I-I just-“ Lance hiccupped and warm tears bled into Keith’s shirt. “I miss them so fucking much, Keith. I miss my family so much…” Keith bit his lip and mentally scrolled through his brain to try and find something he could say that could comfort Lance, but he wasn’t used to Real, Serious Lance. Everything he knew was some kind of upbeat retort prepared for Guarded, Joking Lance.

 

Lance pulled away from the hug to look at him again, sniffling. “What do you do, Keith? It hurts so much and there’s nothing I can do about it and it just _hurts_.”

 

Keith felt a flush spread across his face at Lance’s plea for help combined with a shame for not knowing _how_ to help. Honestly, if he _had_ known his parents and then got shot into space for some kind of terrifying, life-or-death-of-the-universe situation, he would probably feel as complicated as Lance was feeling right now. All he would want to do is slip his headphones in and forget about everything, just taking time to let the intense sadness flow through.

 

Which gave him an idea.

 

“Hold on one second,” he said, letting go of Lance to dig in his pocket for his MP3 and headphones. He handed one to Lance, who held it for a moment until Keith prompted, “It goes in your ear, dumbass,” and he obeyed. Keith went through his library and moved to lay down, so the view of space was all he could see except for the slight form of Lance next to him. Lance scooted so they were parallel, lying down beside him. Keith found the song he was looking for and pressed play

 

The song started with a dull British voice saying, “ _Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space_ ,” and Keith let his eyelids flutter closed. The first verse took a while to start up, so Lance fidgeted a little.

 

“I don’t really understand how this is-“

 

“Shut up and listen,” Keith barked, surprising himself by grabbing Lance’s hand to ground him.

 

“ _All I want in life’s a little bit of love to come and take the pain away,_

_Getting strong today, a giant step each day_ ”

 

As the vocals grew in volume, Keith opened his eyes to check on Lance’s reaction, given that there was still time for his bright song idea to end up a flop. Lance’s eyes were half-lidded as he looked out into space and Keith had to keep himself from gasping at how the stars blinked in the reflection of his pupils.

 

“ _Wise men say, only fools rush in, only fools rush in,_

_But I, I can’t help, I can’t help falling, falling in love with you_ ”

 

Keith winced at the lyrics, suddenly remembering how romantic they were when looked at for face value. Soft electronic chimes and piano seemed to slide through Keith’s mind, dampening the anxiety. It reminded him of days when he lied awake in his bed in the shack, grieving the possible death of his mentor, idol, and friend, Shiro. He wasn’t sure he had cried (or at least, wouldn’t admit he had), and this song was what grounded him and helped him still feel connected to the world. To Shiro, who he believed could still be out there somewhere. The verses’ volume grew, and a chorus joined in to amplify the sounds in the background.

 

“ _I will love you till I die, and I will love you all the time,_

_So please put your sweet hand in mine,_

_And float in space, and drift in time._ ”

 

At this point, the song layered the three choruses on top of each other, crescendo-ing with pure emotional sound. He heard a whimper to his right and turned to see Lance crying again, covering his mouth with his hand and shaking. Instinctively, Keith pulled him close, cradling his head to his chest and smoothing his hair. “Ssshh…” his whispered, lips brushing against the top of Lance’s head.

 

They lay like that for a minute or two, Keith holding Lance, even after the lyrics petered out and the song ended. Somewhere along the way, Lance had grabbed Keith’s shirt and was holding on as if his life depended on it. From this angle, Lance looked like a completely different person than the bickering, yet seductive man Keith was used to. He was raw and fragile, but strong in facing his feelings in a way that Keith knew he himself had yet to learn. After many more heartbeats, Keith heard a quiet, “Thank you…” against his chest.

 

Keith cradled Lance’s face in his hands to make him look up at him and kissed Lance’s forehead. He blamed the action on the well of emotion building up around the location of his heart. “You’re welcome, Lance.” Keith took the towel from his shoulders to dab at Lance’s face, drying any lingering tears and caressing his chin. They sat like that, staring at each other, until a slight _ping_ was heard from the headphones of Keith’s MP3, signaling the machine was about to die.

 

“I should…probably go see Hunk. I promised I would help him cook some dinner today,” Lance said, voice gravelly from the recent hysteria. Keith’s heart fell a little bit at how much the phrasing sounded like an excuse to get away.

 

“Of course,” Keith said brusquely, doing his best to cover his disappointment with a sound of understanding. He got to his feet and offered a hand to Lance, which he accepted, rising to his feet shakily.

 

“Hey, Keith?” Lance asked timidly, still holding onto the hand.

 

“Hm?”

 

“Do you mind if I listen to your music again?” Keith opened his mouth to respond and Lance added, “with you? Sometime soon?” Keith could tell he was trying to slowly inject some of his usual charm back into his voice.

 

Keith felt a genuine smile warm his face. “That would be nice.”

 

Another beat, and Lance took a hesitant step forward and kissed Keith on the cheek, as if returning the one Keith left on his forehead. “See you, Keith,” he said quietly, then turned to leave.

 

Keith stood still for a few extra seconds, until the nerves in his face calmed down and the movement in his gut subsided. He realized that being with Lance was a lot like listening to his music – anger being able to build, sadness to move on, and joy at winning a battle. After placing his MP3 back on the charging station, Keith headed out to see what Hunk and Lance were cooking, his thoughts of Lance making the small machine much easier to let go of.

**Author's Note:**

> it's 2AM and I'm exhausted and I'm avoiding my other fic but this helped my gay autistic heart and i hope it warmed ur heart too
> 
> (please comment if you liked this!!!! it encourages me to keep writing and i love u)


End file.
